You may find the blog to be a little speedier today. It has been slowing down as of late, taking forever to load certain pages. I’m no expert on SQL databases (the backend software which runs this site), but when I looked I saw a button marked “optimize”, so I clicked it and it seemed to speed things up. Hopefully that was the solution.
I am exploring other options as well. As some of you may know, this blog is run from an old computer I have sitting in my spare bedroom and over my home cable modem and it’s done so for about 4 years. That’s served me well so far, but it won’t work forever, especially as traffic to this site continues to grow. With that said, I’m contacting a site hosting company to see what it would cost to move everything, lock, stock, and barrel to a hosted site. I have a feeling it’s going to be expensive, but the only other option is to go along blithely until everything falls apart and I don’t want that to happen.
I’ll keep you all updated as things progress.
Thanks, Dom, for the update and info. I’ve noticed the slowness and appreciate the “optimizing.”
Since I switched to Firefox I noticed longer times for loading and thought that was the reason – though truth be told – FF is slower on other sites also.
But your change has made a big difference!
Well, it’s much faster in Safari! I used to use tabbed browsing just for your sit, Dom. I would open you up in one tab, and usually spend the wait time at “AlbinoBlackSheep.” Now your pages load faster than ABS.
Yours in Christ,
Grant
Sounds like you need an increase in donations for new equipment. How about a Bettnet-athon!
Is there a snail mail address for donations? I’m still queasy about online donating.
I’m certainly not opposed to donations.
Unfortunately, Mark Shea just started his quarterly pledge drive today and I don’t want to steal his thunder. He needs money to support his family; I just need it to help the blog.
If people want to give donations, but want to mail them, they can make a check out to me, and send it to:
Bettnet Enterprises, Inc.
203 Washington St.
PMB#262
Salem, MA 01970
Okay! You can have an outsider host your website…so long as they take the archives too… There’s gold in there!
Oh definitely. In fact that’s where all the expense will come in. I’ll have to hire someone to do the work on the backend of the site and move everything and all that.
The site would probably get zippier if you installed a php cache like Eaccelerator.
Good idea. I’ll look for one that runs on a Mac OS X server (or instructions that tell me how to use the one you recommend).
I’d suggest Turck MMCache. A lot of people use it for Linux and the project page says it works on OS X as well.
Sorry Jim, but we’re going to have to muddle along at half speed until we move to a new server. I just can’t get the darn thing to compile on my server (even though I found Mac-specific directions) and it’s probably because I don’t have the server on the most up-to-date version of the OS.
Rather than go through that mess, I’ll just take the easy, but longer, route—which will also be the inevitable route anyway—and wait until the move.